re: #113 Dark_Falcon

What I’m saying is twofold:

1. Nat Turner’s Rebellion stoked Southern paranoia about “servile insurrection” to such an (irrational) extent that they regarded any idea of abolition as an invitation to their murder.

2. While the Civil War was a strong eventual likelihood by the 1850’s, john Brown’s raid made it a certainty.

Those things having been said, it is still correct to say that the primary cause of the American Civil War was the South’s insistence on not only maintaining, but expanding slavery. Southern intransigence and butthurt played greater roles in causing war than any other factors.

Nat Turner was distinct in the legal response in Virginia, but before they were fearmongering about Nat Turner the South was fearmongering about the Haitians, Gabriel Prosser, and Denmark Vesey in pretty much the same terms. Indeed, one of the propagandic planks of slavery was to maintain a level of fear of rebellion at basically all times: blacks with too much autonomy were a threat to everybody.